The council’s decision to give the university full LLB accreditation comes less than a year after it lifted the notice of withdrawal of the LLB accreditation. This gave the UFS conditional accreditation for this programme.

The latest development comes ahead of the university’s progress report in October which was meant to give the CHE an indication of how far the UFS was in making the necessary changes to the law programme. The UFS was among a number of universities in the country which were at risk of losing their accreditation for the LLB programme. Following this development, the UFS now joins eight other institutions in the country that received full LLB accreditation earlier this year, namely the universities of Stellenbosch, Johannesburg, Zululand, Cape Town (UCT), Western Cape (UWC), Witwatersrand (Wits), Rhodes University and the University of South Africa (Unisa).

The North West University was also one of the institutions that had not received full LLB accreditation yet.

In a statement on CHE’s conditional accreditation, the UFS explained that “a national review was conducted on all LLB programmes in order to strengthen the quality of legal education provision at all South African universities. At the end of March 2017, the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) approved the findings of the National Reviews Committee (NRC) with regard to the LLB programme at the UFS, and placed the qualification on a notice of withdrawal of accreditation”.

The university has welcomed the CHE’s decision with Vice Chancellor, Francis Petersen congratulating the faculty for the way “in which the accreditation process was dealt with”. The UFS’ Law faculty is said to have submitted an Improvement Plan during October 2017 that included solutions to some of the issues that concerned the CHE. The plan also outlined a new LLB curriculum that the institution plans on introducing in 2020.

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